Chrome OS tablets will lead to disruption in the IT market, causing Microsoft to shift its focus to enterprise, according to ASPE.

Google is increasing its spending on data center infrastructure; the amount doubled in Q2 over Q1 at $476 million.

All public activities are now available for developers in the Google Buzz API, this new feature has been named firehose.

eWeek’s Clint Boulton makes the case why Google should keep the government at bay when it comes to its search algorithm.

Chrome is getting smarter: it now can tell you if others are experiencing problems with a website.

Silicon Alley Insider’s recent chart showing the amount of time spent on major sites displays a strong push for both Google and Facebook, while the previous (shocking) champ Yahoo is experiencing a steady overall drop.

Yahoo and AOL are in steep decline, while Microsoft is simply staying afloat, most likely bolstered by spending hundreds of millions on marketing their Bing search engine. Apple, which is rumored to be preparing for a more cloud-based approach, isn’t even on this list.

Facebook has really pulled up close with Google, but co-founder Sergey Brin recently said the company is unfazed by Facebook’s growth.

“The indications that we have show that when Internet users become Facebook users they actually do significantly more searches on Google,” Brin told Reuters in Sun Valley, Idaho last week.

But Google isn’t resting on their laurels in regards to competing with Facebook. That would explain this recent release of a huge 216 slide presentation by Google UX researcher Paul Adams on the problems and opportunities of social networking.

A major publisher of games doesn’t like being limited by the console market.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick is not appreciative of the walled console gardens that make up Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. He says it would be better if games were just played on PCs instead of having to navigate through proprietary processes in order to publish popular games. Kotick laments about the fact that those who play Activision’s games online don’t pay publishers for the experience, but the console makers.

“We’ve heard that 60 per cent of (Microsoft’s) subscribers are principally on Live because of Call of Duty,” Kotick told FT. “We don’t really participate financially in that income stream. We would really like to be able to provide much more value to those millions of players playing on (Xbox) Live, but it’s not our network.”

He also goes on to say that the company would fully support PC manufacturers’ efforts to create a device that hooks up to a television and allows gamers to play via that method.

This sounds familiar. It almost relates to what Google is trying to do with manufacturers such as Dell and HP for Chrome OS. The problem with Activision is that they don’t provide an open platform to play games on; the majority of PC games are still played on Windows. Possible solution? Work on the Google TV project selling higher-end set top boxes built with special graphics cards for gaming.

Yesterday’s launch of the new YouTube Mobile site (just go to m.youtube.com) further reiterates something that has been in my thoughts ever since the explosive growth in mobile apps started. This has really led to another way for large technology companies to wall off their users, much like Microsoft has done over the years. Even though it’s great that you can have a mobile application for virtually anything that you want in your pocket, there are some inherent limitations to these native applications.

TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid makes a good point in his look at YouTube Mobile that the video quality is fantastic – better, he says than the native application that came with Apple’s iOS for the iPhone and iPad. That may have something to do with the fact that the webapp is built in HTML5 and optimized for the current wireless networks that devices use.

“Video on the HTML5 app looked much better, and was snappier to boot”, remarks Kincaid in his write-up.

All the more proof that giving browsers the ability to use the web as a platform to utilize applications is the future of computing, whether it be via a smartphone or a laptop. The idea of Chrome OS or other web operating system simply doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

One of the reasons that web applications have a clear benefit over native ones is interoperability. On the web, diverse applications are able to access and communicate data between one another in order to provide a seamless ecosystem. Think about Twitter, where users allow web applications such as HootSuite access to their accounts to better understand the underlying data. Or, as Kincaid remarks, the simplistic convenience of auto-fill in the YouTube Mobile app.

But what’s wrong with the way things are done now? We’ve seen both Apple and Google take take direct control of users’ devices. Even Amazon has removed books from its Kindle e-reader, citing copyright problems with a publisher. With the new browser technologies like HTML5, a third party cannot take away something that is on the web; and no developer or group of developers is dependent on an outside partner for its applications.

Sure, there are motives behind the decisions above in the face of security and potential lawsuits. Possible hurdles abound with what could happen in a world where applications are easily installed with one click. But Microsoft led a tech space for years that allowed people to put whatever they want on their computers, and despite their flagging performance, they’ve been around for over thirty years.

Would it really take a decade for another operating system to rival Microsoft’s ninety percent share of PC dominance?

Downstream web stats made Google’s purchase of ITA Software a no-brainer, and it’s clear the next target is going to be games.

Ever had trouble with juggling multiple Google Accounts? Maybe you should try out the Quick Google Chrome extension.

The creators of Stack Overflow have launched a Web Applications version of their site specifically for cloud troubleshooting.

There’s so many Chrome and web-based platform news coming out that Microsoft has got to be a bit scared.

Everybody’s working for the weekend, so it kind of flew under the radar last week a quote by Google CEO Eric Schmidt about the reluctance to try another Nexus One-type branded phone, or say, Chrome OS device for that matter.

Speaking to the Telegraph, Schmidt said, ”we have a reference spec for Chrome OS, we have a couple of hardware partners all lined up and the open source is all out there. It’s on schedule and it will happen later this year. Let’s see how well those partners do first. My guess is we won’t need to. The PC industry is different from the phone industry. The PC industry is used to working with Microsoft, whereas the mobile industry was not used to working with software.”

Now the mobile industry is working with software, and that software called Android sure is working out well.

What Schmidt said is really the same thing that we’ve been hearing since Computex. Acer, HP and (although not listed as an official partner) Dell are the three most likely companies at this point to put out Chrome OS devices in Q4.

Back to the topic of software. Because the fact that we’re hearing that Google is ramping up its music and news services only seems to solidify how important user experience is going to need to be to make these Chrome OS machines an ultimate success. We’ve seen a bit already of Picasa adding some cloud computing functions, and there will be no surprise that we will see more of this as we move along the third quarter.

So, in its continued fight against Apple’s massive dominance in apps, Google keeps those Chrome Apps in an ever-evolving state.

Google is looking to close a $3 billion credit deal very soon, more acquisitions on the way?

One has to be convinced that Microsoft is afraid of Google’s App strategy.

Maybe this is already common knowledge, but has Chrome’s growth come at Firefox’s expense?

Eric Schmidt on entrepreneurs: “They’re drop-outs, crazy smart people”.

The Chrome stable channel has been updated – improvements to WebGL, sandboxing and CSS style rendering.

The current state of the tablet market is pretty stale. And let’s not even go into the JooJoo.

I say this because when I was at Taiwan’s Computex 2010 conference less than a month ago there were some formidable competitors in terms of hardware, but the leading manufactures for these devices didn’t really offer a whole lot in terms of software.

Sure, the Acer tablet that allows one to flip the netbook-style form factor over to a table was impressive, but the touch functionality of Windows 7 for it was quite lackluster: I asked a product rep to reboot the device because there seemed to be a problem with the touch software, only to have the same problems crop up again once it started up.

Asus offered up a beautiful tablet design that had potential to compete with Apple, but they kept a product manager closely hovering over the device running a new version of Windows CE that looked surprisingly Android-like, but because of the people and Asus employees holding a close grip on the tablet, no one was really able to test the paces of Microsoft’s UI.

MSI had a winged version of a tablet running Android that seemed surprisingly comfortable in my hands, but we all know that Google’s smartphone operating system isn’t really meant for tablets – it just seemed like a supersized stock version of the OS. An MSI product manager also told me that the MSI Wind tablet was just a concept for now.

This is problematic. The reason why I say this is because since Apple has taken the world by storm plugging an already existing operating system with the iOS to a tablet form factor, that have essentially beaten the entire computer manufacturing market with the iPad. There is no one else that has an operating system that is fully compatible with touch on a tablet.

That’s not to say Android is far behind Apple’s touch-based operating system, but it is clear that unlike the iOS, there was no plan for tablets in its future. We’ve seen early on Google’s Chrome OS tablet concept, and we can only hope that Chrome OS will offer a stylishly-designed slate from the likes of HP, Dell or Acer in the coming months, hopefully something that is just as functional, open source for app developers and creatively designed mobile gadget that can compete with the iPad.

I hold out hope on this, because only one successful tablet in the market does not bode well for innovation. What do you think? Which one of these PC manufacturers has the best chance of offering a tablet running Chrome OS that can compete with Apple?

Dislike the new gray-themed Chrome? Here is a how-to on reverting your browser back too good old blue.

Google is going to make a ton of cash on its television project, and here is an analysis showing how they plan on doing it.

Interesting: Microsoft puts out “tips” for hardware specs on Windows 7 tablets; they look similar to those expected for Chrome OS.

The title of this article does all the explaining – Google is eating Microsoft’s lunch, one tasty bite at a time.

Sharing has become easier with a new update to Google Docs – visibility options have been added next to the title of every doc.

There is a way to do encrypted searches from both Chrome browser and Firefox; here’s how.

Adobe’s PDF format will be integrated into Chrome browser, just like Flash already has been.

Google Docs collaboration has been made easier with some new features, no doubt just in time to compete with Microsoft.

The Chrome browser dev channel has been updated. Looks like it is mainly user interface issues.

It’s not looking good for Microsoft in terms of competing with Google Apps.